After warm handshakes, Professor Eldreth and Mbonga departed with their dinosaurs. Tom and his men took the prisoners to camp, where Chow and Arv were busy restoring order. Both were overjoyed to see Tom and Bud.
“We learned over the radio from Slim that you had things pretty well in hand,” Arv said.
The storm broke moments later. Everyone scurried to get under canvas. Throughout the night and the following morning, rain pelted down from a sky lighted by shafts of lightning.
Not until late afternoon was Tom able to inspect his flying bridge. He was jubilant to find it undamaged.
“Your grigris did the trick,” Bud said with a grin. “You great juju man, Tom Swift!”
Auber, meanwhile, had taken the prisoners to Princetown. He told Tom that Creel, an American citizen, probably would be sent to the United States to face charges.
Kroker, too, might be extradited by the American authorities. Macklin and the rest would stand trial in Ngombia.
By the following week the repelatron skyway
178 REPELATRON SKYWAY
was complete. A national celebration was declared on the day that Tom Swift’s great engineering achievement was thrown open to the public.
The Ngombian prime minister cut a ribbon at the western ramp, and a gaudy procession of native potentates and officials drove over the skyway. Loud bands and dancers in tribal costume accompanied the triumphal parade.
But Tom’s greatest satisfaction came when he saw the ordinary people of Ngombia begin using the long jungle span that now united their country.